The Sunday Musician

I say again: what is it about youth leaders?   Whether they're born that way, or whether hanging out with adolescents warps them, I don't know, but for most of them, their driveway doesn't quite reach out to the road, if you know what I mean.  As proof, I offer this:

One day back in the Big Church part of my life, I'm standing around the kitchen eating cookies from the Children's Ministry cupboard and guzzling coffee straight from the urn, and I hear there's going to be free chair massages.  Lois was treating everyone in celebration of her own birthday.  Whatta woman. 

I signed up for a time slot, and later that morning I'm in the side hall, leaning my face into the pillow, wondering how the poor folks are living and looking forward to a much needed kneading.  The woman doing the massages is this tiny little thing, maybe 95 pounds, soft voice, small hands, etc.  She asked me if she was pressing hard enough, and I said, "Hurt me, dear.  I want to feel your thumbs coming out the other side."  So she started pressing a little harder, but honestly - it was more like a sympathy pat than a massage. 

"You can really press a lot harder, if you want," I said.  "You won't hurt me.  I have a lovely layer of fat."

And then she started to get the idea.  Her touch got firmer and firmer, and I started wondering if maybe she could hurt me.  Harder and harder, and then she started sort of jerking my shoulders back and forth, and then I felt her knee in my back.  She was jamming her knee in my back, pulling hard against it on my shoulders, and...it hurt.  I couldn't believe she had it in her.  And now; should I eat my words and ask her to let up a little, or take it like a man? 

I finally relented and said, "You know, that's maybe a little too hard now."  She just kept it up.  I thought, "Why do things have to go like this?"  I turned around then, to tell her to knock it off, and it's not her - it's Jason the Youth Leader.  He'd snuck up behind her, put a finger to his lips, then replaced her hands with his one at a time and went to work on me. 

Jason has since graduated to some kind of pastoral position.  Note to the people Jason now works with: he looks normal, but he's not.  He has a background in Youth Leading.